—¡Ajá! ¡Habrá luz en una hora! ¿Para qué esperar? Saldré ahora mismo directo al parque. Elegiré allí un gran arbusto empapado por la lluvia, para que, en cuanto uno lo roce con el hombro, millones de gotas caigan sobre su cabeza.
Se alejó de la ventana, la cerró, encendió la vela, se puso el chaleco, el abrigo y el sombrero y salió, con la vela en la mano, al pasillo para buscar al desaliñado empleado que estaría dormido en algún rincón entre cabos de vela y toda clase de basura, para pagarle la habitación e irse del hotel.
«Es el mejor minuto; no podría elegir uno mejor».
He walked for some time through a long narrow corridor without finding anyone and was just going to call out, when suddenly in a dark corner between an old cupboard and the door he caught sight of a strange object which seemed to be alive. He bent down with the candle and saw a little girl, not more than five years old, shivering and crying, with her clothes as wet as a soaking house-flannel. She did not seem afraid of Svidrigaïlov, but looked at him with blank amazement out of her big black eyes. Now and then she sobbed as children do when they have been crying a long time, but are beginning to be comforted. The child’s face was pale and tired, she was numb with cold. “How can she have come here? She must have hidden here and not slept all night.” He began questioning her. The child suddenly becoming animated, chattered away in her baby language, something about “mammy” and that “mammy would beat her,” and about some cup that she had “bwoken.” The child chattered on without stopping. He could only guess from what she said that she was a neglected child, whose mother, probably a drunken cook, in the service of the hotel, whipped and frightened her; that the child had broken a cup of her mother’s and was